Thinking in Strategy Games
by silvercrafted
Summary: He's already been through this once before, already counted his losses in terms of chess. He shouldn't feel the compulsion to do it again. Four pieces, all in a row- black warriors outside the box.


_Disclaimer:_ I do not own FMA or any of the characters.

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He sits back in his chair with the creak of bent leather, crossing one leg to rest on the other, and crossing his arms automatically. He should be working. But he's staring at the chess set, and undoes everything to reach forward and pull the box towards him, flipping it open and picking a piece out at random, just to have something between his fingers.

A pawn. Makes sense, he thinks. Statistically speaking, it's the most probable to pick.

He has a pawn in his group too, a real life one much more engaging than the piece he can twirl between his fingers. The only one who wasn't an officer to start with, even though now he has a small rank. The piece spins between his fingers, perfectly rounded, and symmetrical. Technically speaking, interchangeable with any of the seven others. There's a difference, he thinks. The pawn he's in charge of is not so disposable.

Fuery knows he is a pawn. He's the lowest ranked of their crew, and his skills are the most limited. He works anything electronic, and he rigs the headsets and taps the phone lines, but that's all he does. Still- a pawn he will gladly be. He has faith in the one directing him, and faith that no matter where he's placed, he'll be supported.

Damn. He's already been through this once before, already counted his losses in terms of chess. He shouldn't feel the compulsion to do it again. But this isn't counting losses, really, he tells himself. He just wants to remember their skills. Remember what the new underlings the Fuhrer so kindly gave him don't have. He sighs, setting the pawn down next to the box, fishing around inside until he can feel the piece he wants. The next piece. The knight.

Knights in shining armor, that's how the phrase went, wasn't it? But this knight used to be in the same dark blue uniform as himself, and now was stripped of even that, stuck in the pastel colors of the hospital gown. That loss stung more bitterly than the others- he'd sworn to protect them, keep them from undue harm. He couldn't just accept that loss, and went visiting more frequently than he probably should have.

Havoc thinks he is a pawn. He doesn't really have any skills at all, not like Fuery, who can fix _anything_, he swears. Not like Falman, the walking dictionary. And he's not as smart as Breda. All he can do is be reliable. Train himself to be a decent shot, accept jobs like "Go pick up the Fullmetal" with good grace, and - very occasionally- turn down dates to go sit in some godforsaken apartment and watch over the others. Now, he knows he's a liability. He's something threatened, and entirely too costly to save. He told the Colonel once already- he is willing to be sacrificed, willing to be cast aside and left behind, so that the strategy can move forward. Sacrifices are a crucial part of any game, and this is the biggest sort of game there is; of course there will be pieces lost.

His hand clenches around the knight, sharp corners digging into his palm, before he looking for the next one. The bishop. Tall and slender this piece, and thrown the farthest from home in the mass reassignment. Northern HQ was at least a place they had worked with before; he would probably come to no harm there. No intentional harm, at any rate, nothing because he was a discarded piece of that Colonel's- he knows there are people upset with him. And as much as the Major General was harsh, and cold as ice, she was nothing if not fair.

Falman also thinks he's a pawn, content to be directed as such. He's one of the group, no more, no less. Admittedly the one with the near-perfect memory, and he knows he's used more or less as a portable information bank sometimes - there was a reason it was himself that got called when they needed to cross-examine a suit of armor; he doubted the military would find it terribly innocent if they requested old crime records in the middle of the night. There was a reason- a logic to his use, and he accepted it. But even as a pawn, he knows he won't be discarded so easily. Falman plays chess too, and plays it against anyone who can, up to and including talking suits of serial killing armor, although Barry never mastered any of the basic strategies. And he's watched the way the Colonel plays them, sometimes. He's playing for risky stakes, but a conservative game. Falman knows he won't be thrown away.

He unclenches his hand around the knight and sets it and the bishop down next to the pawn. He needs one more, and wearily pokes around in the box until the form of the rook appears, pulling it out and setting it down next to the others. Four pieces, all in a row- black warriors outside the box.

The rook is a powerful piece, and can dominate the board, if given the chance. His rook is so frequently underrated that it seems it must be a strategy- but it seems that it's probably just because he likes to eat, and he doesn't look the part. Doesn't look like the person who can beat nearly anyone at almost any strategy game. He knows that he's skilled, knows that he can be sent off places to do research, and do it well.

Breda plays chess. He knows that each one of them have their specialty. Each one of them moves differently, like the different pieces of the chessboard. He knows they aren't all pawns to him, knows they aren't all the same. They're used, used properly, each according to their skills. But Breda's seen how skillfully they're manipulated, how skillfully they're ordered, and accepts that this is the way it is, without making a guess at what his own role is in the eyes of his superior.

But no, it's not just those four. There's a fifth, a fifth piece that's been taken from him, and this is the direst loss- the queen. He's loathe to even remove it from the box- and collects the other four instead, letting them roll off his hands and back into the box, flipping it shut and latching it, running a hand through his hair.

Dammit, that one was unfair. Losing the knight had hurt, but it hadn't been a purely cruel move on the part of the enemy, it'd been bad luck. Losing the queen was the twist of the knife in his side by the Fuhrer, for no other reason than that they could, and they knew he'd never do anything that would risk her life. She was the one he kept beside him for as long as he could, before sending her out on missions he could trust to no-one else. The one person who served the most purposes, and the one he held the closest. When you lose the queen, your game is in trouble. But this is even worse, because the other side is cheating, and claimed the queen for themselves.

Riza knows she started out as a pawn. Something manipulated for someone else's goal, and not necessarily one that coincided with her own. Something forced to work against her own principles at times- killing people is enough proof of that. Her back is proof of that. She knows she was a pawn. She still thinks of herself as one, sometimes. But she also knows she's more than that, in this game of his, knows that her position as his aide, his right hand, his cover, and his confidante means she is far more than a pawn. More than something mindless and replaceable. She knows it all changed the moment they made that promise to each other, the moment she agreed to keep a bullet waiting for him should he stray from his path, the moment they agreed to cover each other's backs.

He is the king. It goes unspoken. He's the leader, the one they all sacrifice themselves to protect. The one who, if he falls, everything they worked for falls with him. He stays stationary, directing everyone else with a cool hand, daring to challenge the forces of the opposition. It suits him, this position. So they're all going to work their hardest to make it a reality. To give him that role not just in metaphor, but in reality. If they fall along the way, it's for that reason, and that reason only.

A lone king can't do much. They have to move slowly, painstakingly, square by square. But his pieces aren't quite gone yet- he hears from them from time to time, and knows when that day comes they'll break the rules and return- and he still has tricks to pull.


End file.
